BY MARTA BOVIO
It always comes like this, sneaking up on you and in a good mood, the overwhelming urge to be somewhere else: you’re working at your office desk and suddenly you realize you don’t want to be there. It’s a need that shakes you, opens your eyes; it’s a need that brings with it so many questions you can’t answer. You just know that maybe and for a while you shouldn’t be there anymore.
And so, having embraced this pressing need, we packed our backpacks and set off in two for Marrakech. On a rainy afternoon and against the backdrop of the gray sky of the city that has adopted me for a few years now, we took a flight to Marrakech with a still intact guidebook that smelled like new. 
I didn’t know what to expect. I had no idea where I was going, but I knew I was looking for a comforting journey. I would have been ready for stronger emotions, but the truth was that I had not set out with any great goals — all I had to do was turn around and turn my gaze, for a few days, to new things.
Instead, Morocco shook me up. Right from the start I felt I was in the right place — although outside my comfort zone, the impact with a different culture was incredible. My pupils moved restlessly from one point to another; by the end of the day my eyes were tired from trying to adjust to the hectic pace of the new city. My attention was riveted — I was not alone; around me was the world.
Marrakech is a lively tumult; it is a race against time to see who attracts the most tourists, who is able to maintain a good mood the longest, who can haggle, who is the best host. I could dwell on a myriad of aspects that literally overwhelmed me but the truth is that, during this trip, the thing that struck me most were the smells.
Marrakech is a city more to smell than to look at. The spices are manifold, overpowering anything and, when they meet the scent of sun-dried skins, they acquire a pungent odor that you cannot get off. Totally addicted to the smells and the myriad of items on display, by the end of the vacation I didn’t know what to look at, or what to choose. I was returning home empty-handed before I had the brilliant intuition to buy 2 bags of spices closed tightly in my backpack.
Since I opened the backpack again, my home in Italy smells like Marrakech.
Randomly, unexpectedly and very quickly, I can say that I brought the city home with me.
MARTA BOVIO is an architect and a systemic designer with a passion for photography. She lives in Italy, in Turin, her adopted city after leaving her small town of origin to which she dreams, one day, of returning. In her spare time she cultivates her passion, which is storytelling, photography that tells stories and emotions. Traveling seems like a great opportunity for her to collect stories and cherish them.
